Rebecca A. Foster

Note: this is a bit longer than most of my entries; it's something I wrote for an essay compilation a few years back. I hope it makes you laugh a bit. Hope you all have had a great weekend!  A couple of years ago I was in Washington , D.C. visiting m y cousin at Georgetown University and staying in the  fabulous old-school townhouse he shared with five other guys.  I had a friend with me and it was her first time in D.C., so on a Saturday the lot of us loaded up and went to Mt . Vernon , George Washington’s home, now a museum with various living displays of How Things Used To Be.  Along for the ride were three of their female friends, Tiwi, Kiwi and Regan. (I can't remember Tiwi and Kiwi's real names, but my cousin called them Tiwi and Kiwi, so I do, too.)  We had been at Mt. Vernon only a short while when a big storm blew in off the Atlantic , complete with tornado/severe thunderstorm/hail warnings etc. We were informed by bullhorn they were shutting ...

For our 4th of July party, two of the PC volunteers had a special cake made. They wrote down the message they wanted put on the cake and asked a Chinese bakery to make it for us. I'm not going to post the picture here because some of my readers might be offended by profanity, but if you want to see it, click here . The best part is, when they went back to pick it up, the bakery had placed it in the front store window! Obviously there were no English speakers working at that bakery. (And yes, those are cherry tomatoes on the cake; tomatoes are eaten as fruit here.) Speaking of America, I took this picture of the Washington Monument in D.C. the evening before I left for China. I felt I needed to make a connection to my hometown and home culture before I flew away for two years, so while the rest of my group went out to dinner/drinking, I went to the monuments to take pictures. The guy who spent the weekend in D.C. with me also likes photography, so I'm glad he didn't mind ...

I've been thinking about fate vs. coincidences. Do you believe in fate? I don't. But I have been thinking lately about coincidences. July 1st is my one year anniversary in China. Before arriving, I spent three days in Washington D.C. at a Peace Corps preparation meeting. Usually this meeting is held in San Francisco, but this one time, they changed it to D.C. And because it was held in D.C., a male friend came to spend time with me that weekend before I left for China. In fact, he was the last person I saw before I left for the airport. But after that weekend, things were never the same between us. It's sad to me things changed. I still miss how things were before. And so I wonder: what if the Peace Corps had not changed the meeting location? What if I had gone to San Francisco instead? Would things between us be like they used to be? Or was it inevitable this would happen, regardless of circumstances? As a non-believer in fate, I believe this coincidence is just one of...

I've loved roller skating ever since my little sister Mishka brought me roller skates from heaven when she was born. (Thanks mom and dad, you're right, I don't hate the new baby now!) I lived across from Arlington National Cemetery as a kid, and I spent hours and hours skating along all those paths. I can't walk worth beans, I sorta fall over for no reason, but on skates? I am Kira in Xanadu, even without the awesome knee high boot skates. So during the recent weekend of shenanigans, when we found out their small town had a skating rink, of course we had to try it out. It was like nothing I've experienced before. (Shocking, I know!) First of all, they give you two plastic bags to wear over your feet.  Do skating rinks in America care this much about foot hygiene? No, they don't. Here's a picture of me putting on my foot bag: The rink itself was fully lit, which discouraged any sort of skating rink romance, so disappointing!, but this I could overlook. T...